On 05/26/2013 03:19 AM, bearophile wrote:
Jonathan M Davis:
and I think that null can be extremely useful.
""null"" values are extremely useful, no one disagrees on this.
Good functional languages use even more ""null"" values compared to most
(or all) D programs!
------------------------
Walter:
It was Hoare's engaging presentation on it that turned it into a cause
celebre.
Null pointers aren't even remotely the source of most programming
bugs. If they were, then languages that disallow them would be
super-productive in comparison. But they aren't. They're just an
incremental step, and elevating it into a "deal breaker" is frankly
ridiculous.
Even if it's not a big problem, in the end this problem is now "solved",
because all new languages (Scala,
scala> val s : String = null;
s: String = null
scala> s(0)
java.lang.NullPointerException
Rust, all the Java-like languages
appearing on the JavaVM), plus most or all functional languages, don't
have pointers nullable on default.
Bye,
bearophile
